October 2009

October 27, 2009

With MTV's new interview with J.J. Abrams about how he would potentially be interested in revisiting the Superman movie script he had written at the beginning of the decade, VFK decided to dip into the archives to resurrect this 2002 interview with Abrams in which he talked a (tiny) bit about the project.
As fans may recall, a review of his script was posted on Aint It Cool News and it was truly shredded. Shortly thereafter Warner Bros., based on fan outcry based on the review, shelved the script. Of course given Abrams' current status in Hollywood, WB could very seriously reconsider that screenplay.
Back in 2002, while Abrams was in the midst of production on the second season of Alias, he spoke to VFK Editor Edward Gross about the project. He doesn't reveal much in the way of details, but certainly expresses his enthusiasm over the project.
This was the version that was supposed to be directed by McG and potentially starring Brendan Fraser as Superman.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: The real question, of course, is how you came to be signed on as the writer of the new Superman film.

J.J. ABRAMS: Pretty simple, really. They approached me about doing the movie. I took a meeting. For me, I miss doing movies. I love doing TV, but I wanted to do another film. What’s been nice is working with producers with incredible records, like Jerry Bruckheimer and my idols. What’s wonderful about working on Superman is that as a kid I was the biggest fan. My three and a half year old son goes to bed almost every night wearing a Superman shirt. I couldn’t pass it up.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What’s the approach to the material?

J.J. ABRAMS: What’s nice is that after a lot of years of trying to get this going and not succeeding, everyone’s coming at it with a very fresh, open mind. What’s exciting for me is that we’ve got some incredible, really big ideas that go beyond just the one story we’re telling. ALIAS has actually been an amazing training ground for me. In this Superman we’re talking a lot about where he’s come from and where he’s going. I can’t talk about specifics, but I can tell you that there are a lot of exciting, big ideas. I think it’s Superman for everyone and not just for people who already know the character. It’s for the uninitiated.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Do you feel the first two Christopher Reeve films are a tremendous shadow to overcome, or do you basically just ignore them?

J.J. ABRAMS: I think it’s really a question of embracing what has come before it. This, in many ways, is a retelling of Superman. They did four of those movies, then they did Supergirl — you have to start fresh. I don’t think this should be looked at as the fifth sequel.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: From what I’ve gathered from people I’ve spoken to in the past, producer Jon Peters isn’t much of a fan of the Superman costume or the image of Superman flying. This, of course, begs the question: why bother making a Superman movie?

J.J. ABRAMS: It’s safe to say that if Superman doesn’t fly, it would be a disappointment. I do think that we’re approaching this in a very fresh way, but there are certain things that people have come to realize are important. You have to have the costume and you want to do a Superman movie that will be so satisfying. I’m so sick of going to big blockbuster movies and leaving feeling like I died a little bit, like, “Oh my God, how disappointing was that?” What’s so exciting for us is that we’re approaching this thing knowing and feeling the kind of movie that as kids we used to see. I feel that we’re going to try as hard as we can to make this a satisfying experience.

Richard Donner -- the man who revolutionized the superhero movie genre with 1978's SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, turned 80 on October 24th. And to celebrate, we're taking a look back at excerpts from an interview with Mr. Donner from the archives in which he talks about the making of the film.
THE CHALLENGE:
"You never realize how big and impossible a job it is to tackle a picture, because if you did you'd probably never do it. I knew I had a major picture with major problems, but you surround yourself with very talented people; you have an approach, and you're going to correlate all of those suggestions and thoughts--hopefully--into some sense of objectivity, and you go out and make it.
'We had the task of making that film out of my office. I had a secretary, an assistant and a wonderful editor. Things were a mess throughout the making of the entire film. Every time we wanted to do something, their production department would cancel it, bills weren't paid, people wouldn't deliver products, and we had to hustle, rob, beg, borrow and steal. SUPERMAN is a tribute to a lot of dedicated filmmakers, I'll tell you that. But, hey, that's showbiz!"
ON MARIO PUZO'S ORIGINAL SCRIPT FOR THE FILM:
"It was a well-written script, but it was a ridiculous script. For one thing, here was this producer, a guy named Pierre Spengler, who was going to supervise making this film for the Salkinds, and he had a 550-page screenplay. Well, number one, I said, 'You can't shoot this screenplay because you'll be shooting for five years.' And he said, 'Oh, no. It's fine.' I said, 'That's totally asinine,' but that was literally a shooting script, and they planned to shoot all 550 pages. You know, 110 pages is plenty for a script, so even for two features that was too much.
"It was a parody to start with, in an odd sort of way, but they parodied a parody and kept compounding that felony all the way through until it became much like the BATMAN television series. They had things in it like Superman is looking for Lex Luthor; he flies down and taps a bald man on the shoulder. He turns around and it's Telly Savalas, who says, 'Who loves ya, baby?' I couldn't see going that way with it."
MORE CHALLENGES:
"When I agreed to do the film, I was concerned that Superman shouldn't get screwed up. I never realized what a challenge I was taking on. When I arrived at Shepperton Studios and saw the preparation, I asked them to show me the flying material. I watched it and was stunned to see a man walking along who's jerked off the ground by two wires, and then landing out of control. So that was the first thing we had to correct. Then we had to cast the role, and they wanted to use Robert Redford or something."
"We had seen just about every actor imaginable from television to motion pictures to everything else. Nobody fit the costume. Nobody could fly. If you saw Bob Redford flying, it would be Bob Redford flying. There was no sense of reality. That was the key to it, the flying. You had to believe that a man could fly. I tested quite a few of the actors, but nothing worked. The producers even sent over their dentist. I swear to God that's true."
CASTING CHRISTOPHER REEVE:
"I met Christopher Reeve in New York. I had gotten a call from someone who said, 'There's a kid who's terrific. Would you like to see him?' He was about 20 or 30 pounds lighter, his hair was a sandy color, and he had dressed in the burliest clothes he could find to make him look good. He just had this great look, and I gave him my glasses to wear, and he looked so much like the part it was unbelievable. Nobody wanted to go with him because he was an unknown, but the idea to me was that we should go with an unknown so that you could make it believable. It ended up just that.
"I still have photos from his screen-test. He was this stringbag, this skinny, skinny kid in blue leotards with an 'S' cut into the front of it, sweat pouring out from his arms, and black shoe polish on his hair to give it a black look. But he swore to me he was an athlete and that he could put on weight and build up, so we hired him. We gave him a given amount of time, set him up with this Olympic body trainer and poured all kinds of protein into him, and one day he flew in to our office and was perfect."
HIS APPROACH
"I knew the Superman legend and grew up on it. I knew I didn't want to do what television had done to it. Every kid remembers the TV show. My biggest responsibility to the project, I felt, was somehow having to find some sort of objectivity in visualizing Superman, because everybody has seen him in their own way--either in the reality of a drawing or in the fantasy of their own mind. So I had this tremendous responsibility of trying to find some sort of middle road. Also of jumping the time lap from 1938 to 1978. That was the most difficult flight of them all: not just making him fly, but making him fly through that time warp to be accepted today.
"As we got into it, I saw it as three separate films. It was a trilogy in our eyes. One was Krypton, where we broke away from tradition, because when I came on to the project, their preparation for Krypton was exactly the way it looked in 1939, and I just knew that was wrong. Then a very wondrous man, John Barry, who had also done STAR WARS and died shortly after making this film, came up with a 'modern' Krypton, which we felt was crystalline, like the inside of a stone. Then came the second part of the trilogy, which was Smallville. We didn't research the comic book all that much, but we did spend a lot of time in Norman Rockwell. We just wanted to make it Kansas-Americana. When we got to Metropolis, we wanted to go back to the comic book."
FINAL THOUGHTS
"The thing that got to me on the film and that I wanted to do much more of--and I guess if I didn't have so much story I would have--is the idea of Superman appealing to our daydreams. How many of us have had a great desire to be Superman? To be impervious to pain and accomplish anything that you set out to do? Also, it seems like people are beginning to help each other a little more, and that's the whole point of Superman. He's there to help us, and wouldn't we all like to be him for one goddamned minute? It's a mythology that reaches what is real today. Most mythology, as you know, is period in its being. He just seems to have gone along with time so very well.
"As for my personal feelings? I obviously have a tremendous affection for Superman and what he stands for in my life. I owe him everything."
Happy Birthday, Richard Donner. And thank you!

Back in 1988, CBS premiered a new animated series focusing on the adventures of Superman. The "A" story was a Man of Steel tale based in Metropolis, while the "B" segment was a visual scrapbook of sorts, flashing back to Clark Kent as a child in smallville. Veteran writer Marv Wolfman was the creative guiding force of the show and as the series is released on DVD, he took the time to reflect with Voices From Krypton on the show.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What was the genesis of this particular series -- what made them want to do it, were there any early development ideas that evolved into the final show?

MARV WOLFMAN: CBS was interested in doing a Superman show although Judy Price, the head of CBS kids at the time, was not; she didn't care for superhero shows but since her bosses wanted it, she did it. I was called in by CBS and hired by them to write the pilot. Once they approved the story I did, it was assigned to Ruby-Spears to do. By the way, despite not liking super-heroes, Judy came up with the idea of the Superman Album stories at the end, which I think were some of the best stories we had.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Since this wasn't so far removed from the days of the various incarnations of Super Friends, was there much of a struggle to give the show or the stories within it an "edge"? In other words, much in the way of problems with "standards and practices"?

MARV WOLFMAN: We had a lot of problems with S&P, but still managed to get away with some stuff. I would like to think the slight edge we gave the material was interesting enough for them to okay it. I would have liked to go further, but they were pretty strict. For example, I ended my pilot episode story with a big fight between Superman and the robots which they forced me to change. Superman couldn't crash through the robots because, and I quote - "Even robots have souls." I had to come up with something non-violent, so I had Superman reprogram the robots to collapse. I would have liked the show to go more into the kind of material done in the old Fleischer cartoons, but there was no way to do that then. Also, R&B liked lots of dialog and I would have liked to eliminate most of it during the action. If you look at the pilot there's less dialog in that one than later shows, but even that had more than I would have preferred. By the way, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears were great people to work with and I loved my time at the studio. They asked me to stay on but there were no shows for me to work on so I moved onto other things. But I very much enjoyed my time there. and especially working with Joe who was the creative head of the studio while Ken handled most of the business, at least while I was there.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: The show's opening incorporated the John Williams Superman theme. I loved it, but I'm curious why it was there and if it was a challenge to get the rights.

MARV WOLFMAN: I actually named the show The Adventures of Superman for the old TV show and asked if they could get a little bit of the John Williams score (it was expensive) and put it with new music as well as the old TV show dialog to give it a best of all possible worlds feel. It was a pure fan thing for me.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: On a creative and personal level, what was the appeal of doing this show?

MARV WOLFMAN: Creatively, I got to do Superman stories I had not seen in the kid's cartoons before. I got to blend the Lex Luthor I re-created [in the comics] with the movie version. He acted like the businessman Luthor I came up with, but talked like the Gene Hackman version which was a lot of fun to do.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: You've obviously been involved with the character a number of times. Why do you like him?

MARV WOLFMAN: Maybe because I saw my first Superman TV show when I was between 5-7, but I always felt Superman was the epitome of what a super-hero should be. He represents the right in people. The goodness. But he's now a boy scout. I just like that completely optimistic viewpoint he has. He does what's right because it's the right thing to do, not for any ulterior motive.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: I've loved the character since I was a kid and always get excited when there's a new incarnation. However, today he seems like SUCH a hard sell to the modern audience. Do you agree? And in your opinion, what needs to be done to make the character connect with people?

MARV WOLFMAN: Actually I disagree. Smallville has been on TV and popular for nine years now. Very few TV shows, let alone SF shows, last nearly that long. That indicates they found a way to make him connect with the modern audience. Follow their lead; make him human and with faults, but ultimately believing in doing what's right. Smallville makes him cool. You don't need to go dark with Superman; you need to remember he's a human being. He was raised since a baby in Smallville. He's more man than super and if you keep it that way, you'll make him interesting. Once you care more about the super aspect of him you lose the humanity.